The effect of self-default on the valuation of liabilities and derivatives (DVA) has been widely discussed but the effect on assets has not received similar attention. Any asset whose value depends on the status, or existence, of the firm will have a DVA. We extend Burgard&Kjaer (2011) to...

According to Arrow and Lind (1970), the more shareholders participate in an investment and the more dispersed the ownership structure becomes, the lower the discount rate of an individual investor is due to risk sharing. This implies that the valuation of the investment should increase....

We survey more than 200 private equity (PE) managers from firms with $1.9 trillion of assets under management (AUM) about their portfolio performance, decision-making and activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that PE managers have significant incentives to maximize value, their actions...

This paper examines the propensity of firms to comove in investment decisions. Although stock return comovement and herding among investors received considerable attention in existing work, little is known about correlated investment behavior of firms. After controlling for the similarity of...

The high cost of capital for firms conducting medical research and development (R&D) has been partly attributed to the government risk facing investors in medical innovation. This risk slows down medical innovation because investors must be compensated for it. We propose new and simple financial...

Banks' assets are opaque, and therefore, we model their true accounting asset values as partially observed variables. We derive a stochastic control model to optimize banks' dividend and recapitalization policies in this situation, and calibrate that to a sample of U.S. banks. By the calibrated...

Taxes on capital gains are deferred until realization, whereas dividend taxes are levied upon accrual. This often makes dividends tax-disadvantaged relative to share repurchases, which leads to the payout puzzle: why do firms pay dividends? This paper develops a model of corporate payout policy...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of a 1982 SEC rule that made share buybacks a viable alternative to dividends for paying out funds to shareholders. I propose a quantitative model of heterogeneous firms with dividend adjustment costs and a manager-shareholder conflict, matched to...

We develop a dynamic model of banks whose insiders have superior information about the impact of a pending shock to the bank’s cash holdings and can signal the bank’s type through its dividend policy. Banks that will be adversely affected by the shock have incentives to pool with unaffected...

We examine the determinants of corporate liquidity management through the lens of an estimated dynamic model of corporate investment and financing. When external finance is costly, firms can absorb shocks and cover liquidity needs by holding cash and by drawing down credit lines. In contrast to...